Psybertron Asks

This is the third of three related posts. The first #1 There Is No Right To Offend looked at self-restraint on freedom of offensive expression, and the second #2 The Court Jester concerned the specific cases where expression of offensive humour has satirical intent. These were argued most generally, but were obviously prompted by the Charlie Hebdo massacre and ongoing responses.

In that specific context we’ve already seen Stephen Fry advocate that “we must mock”. Well he’s wrong. It’s OK for him speaking from his position as a national treasure, an established rebel, a comic TV actor, a spokesperson on Humanism and LGBT freedoms to name a few, but in those roles he is one of our most recognisable court-jesters. He surely must mock mercilessly, provided he skewers establishment targets, and so should all satirists, but we cannot all be court-jester at the same time. If we all mock we have our “day of mockery” – an expression of solidarity and depth of feeling – claiming the right of expression, but not constructively addressing any argument. Ultimately degenerate and not progressive beyond claiming the right to do so.

On the other hand we see Will Self and Martin Rowson agreeing, on Channel 4 News, that there really is no absolute right of expression of mockery and offense. Freedom really does come with responsibility for restraint and appropriateness of content and context, where appropriateness includes targetting authority, power or establishment. [Post Note : See also by Will Self.]

On the day of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it was a powerful expression of solidarity against violent intimidation of free speech to claim #JeSuisCharlie in the (Spartacus) moment when the lethal intimidation was palpable and shareable. Now after the event we need more than simple sloganising to discern ongoing issues and actions. Charlie Hebdo were not an unalloyed good. We cannot absolutely identify with the whole of Charlie Hebdo. They asserted their right, but their targets were wide-ranging and their content variable, and in the run-up to the specific events, they knowingly provoked the response they achieved.

Provocation is one aim of satire, but the target matters.
Murder is murder, provoked or not.

Where the topic is Islamism (Jihadism or other terrorist extremism or plain murder “in the name of Islam”) there really is no establishment target for the satire. When the topic is Islam more generally, then there are real establishment – Islamic state establishment – targets, but the target is not Islam itself. When a Jihadist group brands itself “Islamic State” it blurs the picture for sure, but it does not make them an Islamic establishment target. Islam is a target for deliberately offensive satire only where it is the established religion.

Apart from all the questions of security in the face of the reality of armed and motivated Islamists, including those that our freely expressing citizens feel the need to provoke without restraint, there is one topic crystallising in the fall-out. Of course in the process of falling-out we get both extreme perspectives:

• Islamist extremism has nothing to do with Islam.
  (The politically correct end of social media.)
• Islamist extremism has everything to do with Islam.
  (The indiscriminate & prejudiced end of social media.)

The wise position, as ever, lies between the two.

And the good news is that many Muslim spokespeople do recognise this. I say spokeseople, but don’t forget there are billions of Moslems, with thousands of disparate and overlapping Islamic constituencies and communities. I say many Moslems, but I don’t say all or even most (I’ve no idea), just a positively encouraging number. We will never meet a spokesperson or spokespeople people for Islam itself. So:

There is something about Islam that leads to violent Islamist extremism and Moslems have as much interest as anyone else in sorting out what that is and how it should be addressed. Properly targetted (freely expressed, even offensive) satire is surely part of it, but it’s clearly not the solution.

For example: back on 25th November 2014, there was an excellent event #CmnGrnd @ConwayHall “Looking for Common Ground – How can humanists and Muslims live and work together in 21st century London?” Organised by Western and Central London Humanist groups supported by @BHAHumanists.

Chaired by Alom Shaha, the audience was predominantly active Humanists but all four panelists were practising Moslems speaking for a range of Muslim organisations. To a man, the panel highlighted the caveat that “one brings one’s own prejudices to the reading of any holy text” so that the text could form a pretext for any prejudice. Pretext is not justification in anybody’s book.

All also spoke of first-hand experience of prejudice, intimidation (and worse) against themselves and their loved ones, and recognition of mutual responsibility to find solutions.

As the speaking and questioning progressed through the evening a whole range of specific topics came up, many in the realm of rights and freedoms, none of course addressed conclusively on the night. (The above link includes a full audio recording – and I also have comprehensive notes.) Radicalisation to levels of extreme, violent and/or terrorist intent is driven by many different sources of perceived oppression and grievance. One observation made very strongly from the floor was that complexity was actually part of the problem. Anyone asking a specific direct question was asking to be disappointed, if they expected simply expressible satisfactory answers. Even the simplest open questions were indeed rhetorical. We are dealing with complex issues with deep histories with wide scopes and varied perspectives.

The other take-away was sheer gratitude. Thanks for talking to us, thanks for sharing the problem, thanks for listening to our point of view, please let’s continue the dialogue to find solutions.

And the Muslims thanked the Humanists too.

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Finally – Pulling Charlie Together – I drew together summaries and links to all three posts in this series into a further post where I am also collecting related responses to the same issues from other social media and blogs.

This is the second of a three related posts. The first was #1 There is No Right to Offend.

No-one has the right not to be offended, but any restraint on the freedom to offend is a matter of cultural tolerance and moral motivation, and categorically not any objectively-defined “right” with statutory limitation to giving offense. There is no “right” to offend. So the question becomes one of what form do valid freedoms and limitations take.

Our topic here is not dialogue, debate and argument, directly constructive in terms of its content and immediate outcomes, which proceeds on a basis of mutual respect between the participants. We’re beyond that, where intent to offend is at least part of the motivation, and as already noted in the previous post, there is a whole spectrum of possible cases.

Firstly let’s discount some meta-cases. One is simply to assert the freedom, when under threat or implied intimidation against it, but that’s a meta-reason about the freedom itself, not about any content or specific target of the expression. Similar is the case in any exchange expressing or debating disagreement, where dialogue and argument degenerates into expressions of frustration and anger, possibly even as reaction to previous expressions of abuse. Again another meta-reason to express offense, to reinforce or emphasise the disagreement or offense, but not to advance the content of the argument. I think of these cases as misdirected, or temporarily directed, offense.

And, apart from any deliberate wish to gratutiously offend or mentally hurt another individual human – harm is harm, physical or otherwise – there really is only one other class of valid cases.

In a word, satire.

Now, before satire specifically, humour generally which, like art, defies objective definition. Between sarcasm and wit, word-play and irony, the unexpected, physical slapstick and outright shock pretty much anything goes. Like offense itself, without objective definition any freedom to express humour is never going to be a statutory right with definitive limits. You know it when you experience it.

This reliance on subjective freedom to express – the freedom is from the side of the target, the butt of the joke, the restraint only from the joker – works fine in a world where we recognise the jokers for what they are, the court jester. Their free expression tolerated by an establishment and recognised by a public. In these days of ubiquitous social media and comment channels, not to mention the proliferation of media channels at all levels between the individual and mainstream broadcasters and media publications, almost everyone finds themselves concerned directly with freedom of expression and the possibility of expressing offense, deliberate or otherwise, wittily satirical or not.

So complex in any definitive objective sense, that for many – now billions of individuals – it’s easiest to assume nothing is beyond the pale, than deal with the myriad subjectivity of intent and consequence. Easier sure, but not absolute. When limits are questioned by those discomfited or offended, or those sympathising with those targetted, there can be no statutory definition – just a test of social acceptance. Think Frankie Boyle and the Sun, and testing limits to “sacred” satirical targets of humour, or invoking blasphemy laws in secular states. They hit the headlines.

There are two points. The first is that such a test cannot work if billions of individuals individually push the limits. We can’t all be the jester in the court of the establishment. It has to be an exception, at least a minority, within the population, the rest of us must exercise restraint, excepting say the concept of a “day of rage” where the point is to highlight the depth of anger. The second is that to be valid satire, as opposed to random offensive humour, the target must be the establishment. No topic is out of bounds, but the message must be targetted at the establishment, not just any population or individual with whom we have a beef, or even a deadly serious grievance. Satire, mockery, ridicule are misdirected here, justified by emphasis and provocation for sure, but not germane to resolving the content of any argument or disagreement.

Satire is for those people and media-organs recognised and the “court-jesters” of our time targetting the establishment “court” of our time. We cannot all be the court-jester at the same time – that’s anarchy. Outside these boundaries, no-holds-barred offensive humour however witty, can only be hurtful and/or provocative of a response – be that response a laugh or a violent reaction.

Charlie Hebdo knew exactly what kind of response they were provoking.

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The first part was #1 There is No Right to Offend.

Continued in #3 Islam, We Have A Problem

And all 3 are rounded-up in a 4th.

[Post Note : Excellent BBC Magazine piece from Will Self.]

[Post Note : And also from Frankie Boyle. And another great take from Frankie.]

[Post Note : Another “court jester” example from Catherine Tate.]

[Post Note 30 May 2016 – Paul Gascoine case. “Mildly” racist quip as part of an evening with anecdotes. Seems trivial, but is it? How does the integrity and intent of the speaker come into it? An unofficial and sad case of the jester in court?

And more, when offense is effectively “hate speech”

Corbynistas and the far-left. Now identical to the far-right. pic.twitter.com/W8d7nuDzJy

�” (((Andrew Spooner))) (@andrewspoooner) June 30, 2016

And link to earlier pre-Brexit Boris piece

And when it’s deliberately offensive against a much more offensive target,

Anyway , where was I, oh yeah #fuckisis pic.twitter.com/VtP0xnfRB7

�” Tommy Robinson (@TRobinsonNewEra) June 29, 2016

…. but not remotely funny, witty or even ironic.]

Humanist declarations, and UN Human Rights declarations include the double-negative form of words:

“No-one has the right not to be offended.”

And often in debate, or other free one-way expression of opinion, people express the sentiment “offense is taken not given”, “why should I care if you’re offended” – usually in less polite “fuck you” or “spin on it” terms such as used in one of the cartoon responses “giving the finger” to the CharlieHebdo massacre.

Of course these are debates and contexts where we’re already far from considerations of “being polite” – we have serious disagreement, rejection and downright condemnation of positions and actions – in which, under the mantra of the “right to free speech”, we may already feel the need to be …

“rude and offensive and vulgar and obscene (and blasphemous)”

… in anybody’s language. That is, the giving of offense is deliberate, but it nevertheless comes in a wide range of varieties:

• Gratuitously intended with little if any thought to any (positive) aims beyond the offense.
• Gratuitous in the immediate (tactical) context, but with higher (strategic) aims.
• Strategically intended and delivered with satire, irony and/or other form of humour.
• Strategically incidental but delivered with humour.
• And so on …

Permitted (tolerated / allowed by the cultural context) rather than framed as an objective right in law. Limited only by restraint from the giver rather than legal protection for the taker. Restrained by a virtuous duty of care only, but not by blasphemy law (say) or intimidation.

In freedom of expression, there is no unqualified, blanket Right to Offend.

Whatever offense is permitted it cannot be defined as a right in objective terms from the subjective perspective of the offended party because in reality the effect and intent are also on a rather grey scale from the giver’s perspective. So the issue we have is that we have a doubly-subjective and therefore problematic definition of any limitations on the right to offend, so it is certainly snappier to think of it as an unqualified right. But it’s not.

Next installments:

#2 The Court Jester – contexts where permission to offend under freedoms of press, expression and speech demand (offensive) satire and ridicule beyond virtuous restraint.

#3 Islam, We Have a Problem – representatives of Islam address Islamist extremism – terrorist barbarity – done in their name in response to “blasphemous” ridicule or any other grievance.

[Hat tip to Ben and Sam for inspiration to now publish what had been long-standing drafts. Further explicit links and references in future installments.]

[Post Note: and a final round up of #1, #2 and #3 here.]

John Farrell tweeted the observation that tonight’s cup game between AFC Wimbledon and Liverpool was being touted as if AFCW was the same club as the old WFC – which is a good thing despite the fact they’re not. It was Ben Cobley’s retweet that I picked-up, and when I mentioned the old days at Plough Lane (WFC’s ground at the time) it turned out Ben was also a supporter on the terraces there at that time.

From the north-east of England, I was a student in London 74 to 77 and WFC were promoted from the Southern League to the old 4th division, the same year I graduated and started living and working in SW London, sharing rented houses with other mates from the north.

78 and 79 we took the opportunity to watch mighty representatives of north-eastern football then in the 4th division – Hartlepool, Darlington, York, Doncaster to name a few visitors to Plough Lane. I’d forgotten Ron Noades and Dario Gradi were the management team at that time … but I do recall in those early league days, there were few enough on the terraces, that the banter involved conversations with the guys on the pitch. Great times.

By 79/80 I’d moved to live and work in Reading, and my social contacts with London were reduced to live music rather than football, but when Sylvia and I married and set-up home in Reading, the first day of the 81/82 season we looked for a match since it turned out we were both fans. Reading FC hadn’t really registered on our radar then, but we noticed the Fulham had just been promoted to the top flight and their opening game was to entertain Chelsea, so we rather naively set off for the Cottage.

Discovering from the radio on the drive there, that game was a sell-out (naturally), I suggested given the lateness of the hour and the direction we were headed, “how do you fancy WFC?”

We never looked back. The original Crazy Gang years were even greater times. Corky, Ev, Glyn, Wally, Bez and Fish and later Vinny, Sanch and Fash all under ‘Arry’s direction. Don’t recall now whether they were back in the 4th or whether they’d had their second promotion to the 3rd that season, but 81 to 86 every season was a promotion or relegation battle, culminating with achieving the top flight in 86. I reckon we missed barely a dozen games, home or away, through that period. Mad times. That was BC (Before Kids) and eventually WFC was no longer the original crazy gang when ‘Arry left after finishing 6th.

We never found First-Division / Premiership finance / football as engaging as the real thing. For us a real highlight was a freezing foggy Tuesday night at Oxford’s old Manor Ground – cages for the away fans didn’t protect us from being pelted with coins by our hosts – so foggy that we had to ask Bez what all the commotion was up the other end. Sure enough, Wally had been sent off again. Another surreal memory was the fine summer’s day we beat The Blades away on the last day of the season to not only seal our own promotion, but also to deprive them of the same when, thanks to other results a draw would have served us both. After being held back for about half an hour we were advised the noise and smoke was a police car rolled up against the back gate of our stand and set on fire by their disgruntled fans – and we were eventually let out in small groups walking across the pitch to more remote exits.

Whilst Sylvia was pregnant with our first, we paid one visit to Reading FC – I think by then I’d seen a few evening games there with Reading work colleagues – and all we experienced was away fans’ (Bournemouth) thuggery and violence in the scarily claustrophobic terraced streets around Elm Park. It was several years before we went back to live football with the boys, but that’s another installment – starring Glen Hoddle.

Interesting (2014) blog from Henry Mintzberg on (1980/90’s) Harvard MBA failings, echos my own (1992) MBA Dissertation.

A flexible learning organisation needs a rational model like a hole in the head.

What goes around comes around. Also put me in mind of (1920/30’s) Mary Parker-Follett.

Interesting and thorough piece in Nature on why basic scientific method of empirical falsification still matters to the integrity of physics however creative the hypothesising.

Of course (as the sole commenter so far says), there are plenty of other valuable kinds of knowledge and evidence, which also require careful reasoning. Some scientists may wish to claim redundancy of any other kind of philosophical thinking – but it wouldn’t be science. (Hat tip to Sabine Hossenfelder on Facebook.)

[Post Note – and quite a few articles responding to the post in Nature, also being collected by Sabine.]

Interesting analysis by Paul Mason of C4.
Not particularly original ideas, but good to see the whole position summarised readably:

Opec’s decision to go on pumping oil, in November, faced with collapsing demand, was designed to do exactly what has happened �” sink the oil price to the point where only the big Gulf producers can break even, harming their competitors [including Russia] �” and in the process sabotaging the expensive end of the US shale-oil industry.

What it does to Putin’s power base is scary of course.

Just a quickie to highlight for posterity a point I made earlier (and before).

Forget – “Collapse of the observed probability wave function.”

Think – “Collapse of the mythical abstract concept of objective reality.”

You may have heard that here first, but I’ve been piecing it together from the giants on whose shoulders I would that I stood. For example: now that we’ve buried his cat once and for all, could we please resurrect the good work of Erwin Schroedinger.

Interesting that Jim Al Khalili retweeted a linked review of his Life on the Edge from Nicola Davis in The Grauniad. Not exactly a glowing report, but I often feel the same, that the stack of assumptions and interpretations needed to support scientific “fact” at the extremes of fundamental physics are exactly that – a house of cards. (PS not seen any reference to the Schroedinger work “What is Life?” – a fine little book on the topic.)

Watched episode 1 of Jim Al-Khalili’s “The Secrets of Quantum Physics – Part 1 Einstein’s Nightmare” at last. (Mentioned related stories in a couple of previous posts.)

In synopsis – ‘cos I’m in a hurry as ever – everything about discoveries of quanta from Einstein on the photo-electric effect, the many forms of the ubiquitous dual-slit experiment(s), “spooky” action at a distance, EPR and the Einstein, Bohr (and Heisenberg) disagreements have been the stuff of popular science writing for some time (archetypically for me, Gribben and Charlesworth in cartoon form.) Even up to Bell’s inequality and the experiments on pairs of polarised electrons following separate paths. No mention of advanced or pilot waves and thankfully no mention of Shroedinger’s cat, despite numerous “open the box” opportunities. If that is unintelligible to you, then you need to watch Jim’s program and/or read his book.

Only weak point for me was that it is not made clear how and why the Bell card-pairs-game and the polarised-electron-pair experiment using Bell’s inequality does actually prove the Einstein-Bohr argument one way or the other. Bell’s inequality is stated without really explaining what it means?

BUT sure Einstein was wrong with his rigged-deck take on avoiding the conclusion of observer driven outcomes. He was of course right on a lot more. I always felt the concept of there even being a (predetermined) deck to be rigged was his point, the point being it’s a daft idea, like Shroedinger with his cat – to illustrate how mad – weird – the prevailing quantum concepts are when related to our common sense world. Thought experiments to demonstrate how inconceivably these metaphors could possibly reflect how reality really is. Which is the point.

Good that Jim clearly sees the ongoing weirdness as a problem needing sorting out. The fact this suggested some serious misunderstandings about the true nature of reality itself, exposed by Einstein’s refusal to agree with Bohr being ignored post-war in the Copenhagen drive to “shut-up and calculate” – QM works for (say) nuclear power and the electronics of the communications age – who cares? Conflicting opinions were simply “swept under the carpet”. Interesting that the hippy and eastern mysticism movement – that in fact led hippy physicists to the polarised-electron-pair experiment – is indeed a part of the story – a story about the nature of reality that is, not about any good or bad “science of the supernatural”. Looking forward to Part 2.

My take – the weirdeness is simply a consequence of misguided common sense about objects and objectivity. ie it’s not their “observation” that’s the problem, but their conceptualisation in the first place, which ultimately leads to them being set up to be observed. We reify into objects what is in fact more immediate pre-conceptual empirical experience – deliberately to make objects distinct from ourselves as subject. Science is based on objectivity, whereas reality really isn’t. I hope Jim recognises that’s a philosophical question and not a scientific problem, ie I’m not knocking the science. Science cannot know reality at these levels. As Jim says it is in some sense unknowable, unknowable to science that is.

Really good takeaways. Honest on the state of what is truly (not) known and understood at the QM level and seriously well done for not resorting to Schroedinger’s damn cat. Well done.

[Aside – no mention of De-Broglie-Bohm advance “pilot” waves – Jim mentioned in a tweet he had a preference for this view – over Copenhagen anyway.]

[Post Note : Even objects as large as molecules comprising 114 atoms (!) giving double slit interference signature. LiveScience via @cpwernham. Beware spammy site, checking secondary sources. Objects are not what they seem.]

[Post Post Note : And in response to comments Jim has blogged more explanation of what he glossed over about what Bell’s inequality said about Einstein, Good stuff. Even again, forced to choose, would side with Einstein. My point is, sure all authoritative science remains contingent, but some science has never got beyond being contentious. Good mention of the De-Broglie-Bohm alternative too. And sure too, a public TV programme is not a physics lecture, so difficult details have to be excused, but the key messages must remain honest.]